On "The Price of a Haircut" by Brock Clarke (5024 words) ****

Brock Clarke has been tearing up the literary scene for few years now, and a nice thing about his work is that much of it is available online, in case you're too cheap to buy his books. Of course, you'll miss out on some of his best fiction that way ("For Those of Us Who Need Such Things" and "The Fat," for instance). Most of Clarke's fiction centers around men in crises who, generally, fail to measure up--and the men in this story seem to fall right into that line. This story is also one of the first in which I've seen Clarke address larger historical moments, in addition to the social issues that he has sometimes previously addressed. Read the story here.